1943 Newspapers

So, back in 2006 my family (mostly my parents, my Uncle and I)  took a few consecutive weekends to clean out my Grandma Eva's house.  It had been decided that she would not be able to return home after she'd taken a fall on the ice earlier that winter.  Going through decades of memories was a difficult task for us all.  But we learned much.  We sold many items, but kept many things that we had personal connections to.  I will probably talk about them often. 
Anyways, one of the things we kept was Grandma's very antique ironing board (actually, I think I encouraged someone to keep it because it was so old and unique and my parents took it home to store as I had no room).  Well, this fall they took it apart and you wouldn't believe what they found!  Under the cover, the padding had worn so Grandma (or Grandpa) had placed newspaper under the cover.  The papers are The Williston Herald from May, June and July of 1943!  One is even from my birthdate in June!  They are so much fun to read through.

Here they are all together.  A treasure-trove of American History!!  Little snippets and snapshots of the everyday happenings of May 1943!  How cool is that?!

Each paper has this little sticker on the front page with my Grandfather's name on it.  Not sure what that was all about.  Was the newspaper put into their mailbox?  I always thought papers were delivered by paperboys who just blindly grabbed a paper and tossed it to whomever.  But these are labeled.

This is adorable!  Look at those cute little spice jars singing away.  I wonder what they are singing?

There were two whole pages of grocery store ads.  I'm thinking this was done every Thursday?  It's interesting that nowadays we have just a couple of the big supermarkets here in town but back then they had a number of smaller "mom and pop" grocery stores.  

If my map reading skills are correct, this grocery store was located where the American State Bank building now stands on Broadway.

 

"Read both figures for the biggest point values"---oh yeah, that's right, there was quite a bit of rationing going on in 1943.  Wow!  A 20lb box of apples for 1.89!  I pay more than that for 1 Lb of apples now-a-days.

"Oh wow! Look at that!" is exactly what I said when I saw this OLDER logo for Red Owl.  I think I got goosebumps!  Nerdy, I know.

Threw this one in so we can see what prices were like back then. 

And (this is cool) in each paper there is an offer for a dress pattern.  I would so wear this dress!  If I had a decent figure I would wear dresses like this almost everyday. 

I chuckled when I first read this lost and found notice for the bottom of a fountain pen.  But I suppose that would be a big deal to lose.

Here is an advertisement for Penney's.  What I would've LOVED to see was an advertisement for Hedderick's of Williston.  I remember going there as a kid.  I remember Penney's too as a kid, and the Woolworth.  We never ate at the Woolworth lunch counter, but it was there, and there were parakeets in the back of the store. 

So that is the issue from May 13th, 1943.  There was much more to be read.  Happenings of the War, local news, actually someone from the Epping area had died in a car-train accident. 

Thank you Mom and Dad for NOT throwing that ironing board away at the time.  And thank you for entrusting these papers (little gems) to me!  They are so much fun!  I will blog more about the other papers later.

For now, Have a Happy Day!